Heads 
Stags’ 
9 1 
headed stags should not be killed till after or during the rutting season, as they would then 
have done their duty — a statement which is very doubtful. 
An interesting parallel is pointed out by Sir William Flower between the development 
of the race and that of the individual :— 
The earliest known forms of deer (he says), those of the lower Miocene, had no antlers , as in the 
young of existing species. The deer of the middle Miocene had simple antlers with not more than two 
branches , as in many existing deer of the second year. Species occur in the upper Miocene with three 
SERIES OF HORNS GROWN BY “ TILT ” (SEMI-FERAL) 
A stag taken as a calf from Glen Tilt and kept in confinement in Blair Castle Park. The dropped horns are mounted on skulls, and must be counted from 
left to right. They commence with eleven points as a four-year-old grown in 1840, and end with the stuffed body of the deer, which was shot in 1850. 
branches to the antlers, but it was not until the upper Pliocene and Pleistocene times that deer were met 
with having antlers developed with that luxuriance of growth and beauty of form characteristic of some of 
the existing species in a perfectly adult state. 
Horns are composed of three tissues : i, bone ; 2, true skin ; 3, epidermis, which, when 
developed in a great mass, forms the hard substance commonly spoken of as horn. The 
upgrowth is thus simply described by Sir William Flower :— 
In the family Cervidae , or deer, the frontal appendages take the form of “ antlers,” which must be 
